Biography: Saeed Behzadipour received his BSc and MSc in Mechanical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 1998 and 2000, respectively. He received his PhD in Mechanical engineering from University of Waterloo, in 2005. He was an assistant professor in Mechanical Engineering in University of Alberta, Canada from 2005 to 2011. He is an associate professor of Mechanical Engineering at Sharif University of Technology and director of Djawad Movafaghian Research Center in Neurorehabilitation. His research interests include rehabilitation engineering and robotics.

Speech Title: Biomechanical challenges in Robotic Exoskeletons

Abstract: Robotic exoskeletons are predicted to have a market size of 2.8 billion dollars by 2023. It is considered as a valuable human enhancing technology in physical activities as well as an assistive one for disabled people. The technology is at the crossroads of robotics, control, and biomechanical engineering. However the last one is less discussed in the literature. This talk will present the biomechanical challenges and problems encountered in this technology and the recent developments in the area. It briefly reviews the history of development of this technology and the intended applications from military to rehabilitation and the recent developments in the market. Then, the challenges of attaching a robotic kinematic chain to the human body with a complex kinematic will be discussed and the critical research problems will be presented. Finally, the motion planning of such robots and the biomechanical considerations of stability, safety and energy efficiency will be presented.

Amir H. Davaie Markazi

Professor

School of Mechanical Engineering Iran University of Science and Technology

Biography: Dr. Davaie Markazi received his BSc and MSc in Mechanical Engineering from Iran University of Technology and Sharif University of Technology in 1982 and 1987, respectively. He received his PhD in Mechanical engineering from McGill University, Canada, in 1995. He is currently a Professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology. Dr. Markazi is one of the founders and the former Chair of the Iranian Society for Mechatronics. His research interests include digital and hybrid control of dynamic systems, adaptive fuzzy sliding control of nonlinear systems, networked control systems, Robotics, and Dynamic Analysis of Brain. Dr. Markazi has published numerous journal and conference papers and two books.

Speech Title: Recent Advances in Adaptive Fuzzy Sliding Mode Control and its Applications

Abstract: Many well-known control approaches have already been developed for control of nonlinear uncertain systems in the literature. More specifically, a broad range of methods, namely, the Adaptive Fuzzy Sliding Mode Control (AFSMC) approach have been proposed, with the core idea of achieving robustness and lesser extent of information about the plant, since 1994. A new class of AFSMC methods have been developed and extended in the Mechatronics Lab of IUST since 2008. The proposed methods have been successfully applied to control of SISO/MIMO chaotic systems, MEMS resonators, Mechanisms with friction, Active vortex-induced vibration control, Pneumatic vibration isolation, Wheel slide protection of locomotives, Input-delayed uncertain systems, Anti-lock break system, Under-actuated AUVs, Proportional navigation of uncertain targets, active vibration control of thick piezo-laminated beams and position/force control of Hexapod robots.

In this talk, a particular case study, namely, the hybrid position/force control of a Hexapod (Stewart Manipulator) using the AFSMC method will be discussed in a bit more detail. The important advantage of the proposed method is the ability to work with a highly simplified dynamic model of the robot, where the ignored part of the model dynamics has been considered as an state-dependent uncertainty. Such a complex problem has been successfully controlled by an extended version of the AFSMC method. Experimental verifications are performed on the position control loop of the Stewart Manipulator to depict the effectiveness.

Dr. Mehdi Tale Masouleh

Director of the Human and Robot Interaction Laboratory

School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty of Engineering,

University of Tehran

Biography: Mehdi Tale Masouleh received the B. Eng. M. Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical engineering (Robotic) from the Laval University, Québec, Canada, in 2006 , 2007 and 2010, respectively. He is currently a faculty member of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Tehran. He is also the director of Human-Robot Interaction Laboratory, known as TaarLab for its Persian abbreviation. His research interests are kinematics, dynamic and design of serial and parallel robotic systems, Humanoid, mobile robots and optimization techniques (interval analysis and convex optimization …) and learning-based approach for robotic applications. He is supervising several undergraduate and graduate students and published several papers in different filed of robotic mechanical systems. Some of industrial projects under the supervision of Mehdi Tale Masouleh are the development of several parallel mechanisms (Tripteron, Delta (3 and 4-DOF), Gough-Stewart platform and a cable-driven parallel robot), Haptic device for dental education simulation and extending a social robot (Sanbot) for Bank Services.

Speech Title: Human and Robot Interaction, From Academy to Industry

Abstract: The Human Robot Interaction (HRI) field is rapidly developed by various activities, varying from robots design to creative programming skills and safety considerations. Knowing the fact that robotic science has evolved from desktop computers, to robust mobile and to eventually fill the gap between the virtual and physical worlds, but there are still plenty of tasks required before constructing an environment where robots and humans can interact concordantly with each other. HRI envisions an imminent future where robots scatter everywhere and work with human beings side by side. To exploit successfully robots in public environments, varietal foundations seem essential, such as robot mechanisms, sensation, perception, motion planning and programming.

In this lecture, we touch upon several projects conducted in the Human and Robot Interaction Laboratory, where most of them are arisen from industry demands. In order to extend applications of robotic systems to every aspect of human life, which is a high leap for industrializing the HRI field, several mechanical and learning-based methods should be investigated. TaarLab, using both the hands-on experience and theoretical knowledge, is now pioneer for carrying out the foregoing methods by implementing them on its robots. Learning-based methods are crucial due to the fact that they can operate as a logical organ for robotic systems. Motion planning and environmental recognition are some of important duties of robots which require highly-developed learning-based algorithms to successfully interact with humans in public.